What we can and cannot say about climate change and the Nepal disaster

Zeke Hausfather · 28 Aug 2026 · theclimatebrink.com ↗

3 korrents from this piece

Zeke Hausfather did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
A warming climate and retreating glaciers are raising the risk of Himalayan ice-and-rock collapses regardless of whether any single event can be attributed to it.

Their wordsA rapidly warming climate and retreating glaciers are increasing risks of these sorts of events in the region, whether or not we can ultimately attribute this particular event.
Our reading
The historical occurrence of extreme natural events does not by itself show whether their odds have changed over time.

Their wordsBut the existence of old events tells us nothing about whether the odds are changing, and heat waves happened in 1900 too (just less frequently).
Our reading
What drives glacial hazard risk is the rate of change in ice and permafrost, not the total amount of ice present.

Their wordsRather, what drives risks is how fast the ice and the frozen ground beneath the ice are changing.